


Vengeance

by Toshi_Nama



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Child Death, Complete, Fridge Horror, Gen, Heavy Angst, Horror, Internal Conflict, Lyrium, one last chance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:01:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toshi_Nama/pseuds/Toshi_Nama
Summary: The Chantry has been destroyed, the Circle and much of Kirkwall with it. The war didn't come.More deaths, and the war didn't come.When it did, it didn't come in fire and certainty, but violence and scorn.Where was Justice here? Where was Vengeance across these death-soaked fields? Who would be left, when the lyrium sang one more time?
Relationships: Anders & Justice (Dragon Age), Justice Anders/Lyrium (Dragon Age)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Vengeance

He wandered.

Disheveled, dirty - he’d become just another madman with a wooden staff, muttering to himself. He was nothing dangerous. Not anymore, at least.

_ Yes you are. _

“No, no. I’m...we’ve…”

More corpses showed themselves in the wavering scrub along the road.

_ Everywhere,  _ there were corpses. Worse were the vacant-eyed children. Worst were those killed by magic. He knew the signs. Blood and shocked expressions versus melted skin and terror - or flesh that dripped from black-streaked bones, rotting in the sun. The flies avoided those, but they loved the ones killed by the sword. 

_ This is what you wished. What was necessary. They are free. _

“No. No, this isn’t...this can’t be...this is…” He heard the rustle too late, and snapped out of his conversation with the other half of himself.

A girl looked at him with large eyes, then started screaming. Flickers of fire danced on her fingertips. “Stay away! Stay away! Demon!” He blinked again, too slow. This one was real. This one was  _ alive.  _

_ “No!” _

The rage - the rage boiled up.  _ I AM NO DEMON.  _

It thundered in his head, down his fingertips, and he felt smoke erupt as more of the Fade than  _ he  _ could control burst through his veins. He had no control - he never had. Control took  _ work.  _ Control was an illusion, shattered along with his principles.

The only one who’d ever managed to stop Justice was…

Not here.

When he could see through bloody eyes, the first thing he noticed were his fingers. The red - it lined the nail beds. How unhygienic. How much time had he lost? His mind fled from that question without any help. He didn’t look up, focusing and blinking until the blurriness faded and he could see the ridged lines that ran down the nails - one had broken, torn to the quick. The blood was dark in spots. One finger poked at the blood - it shifted slightly, but didn’t wet the fingertip. Not dry, but no longer wet.

Lessons and experience filled his mind with raw data. How long since the wound? Ten minutes, perhaps? Fifteen on the outside. Any longer and even in these conditions, the blood would have dried completely. He was a healer. That’s why he knew that. If he repeated that mantra enough times, he could still believe it.

_ I am no demon. _

No demon. No, he wasn’t a demon. They were an abomination - “What have you done?”

_ I have done nothing. We have prevented another danger from stopping us. _

Yes.

Yes, he could believe that, could trust...he’d trusted. He’d trusted for so long, his constant companion, the only one he knew would stand by him because they had made their one choice…

He’d never trusted, he just wanted to trust.

_ You trusted me. You wanted this. We remember. _

He remembered many things, but never what happened when Justice’s rage snapped. Was that a blessing? He raised his eyes, not needing to swallow to taste coppery sweetness, or breathe to have the same against his nostrils, wrapped in burnt grass.

“She was nine! Ten, maybe! She was innocent!”

_ She was of the Circle, and called us a demon. She was corrupted.  _ The voice was as certain as always, its judgement sure.

He could still recognize the bits of bright blue-and-gold robe on the corpse - Where was that from? He’d known all of the colors, once. Blue and gold...blue and gold…

Montsimmard, maybe. Or was it Markham? No, White Spire. 

The girl hadn’t  _ sounded  _ Orlesian, had she?

_ What does it matter where she was corrupted? _

Circles had wealth and resources. 

_ They chose corruption and confinement over freedom,  _ the voice in his head condemned.  _ We have seen it before. _

If she were an apprentice, there would be...would be…

He didn’t look at the wreckage of the face, broken teeth showing through the rent cheek, or the socket devoid of its eye.  _ Lyrium. _

She had to have it.  _ Had  _ to. Circles had lyrium. It would help against the throbbing of his drained body. Wait. Lyrium...something tugged at his weariness and jaded memory. There had been a story he heard, before he’d met Justice...

_ Yes. Lyrium will make us stronger. _

“Yes. Stronger.” He said whatever Justice wanted to hear - it was easier that way. Easy. It was  _ easy  _ to agree with him, to make him a person - to believe it was simple. He ignored the body and pulled out a potion from the padded pouch at her waist. Two. The third was shattered against the ground.

Potions. Lyrium. It glowed blue, even against the sunset. He could almost feel the power washing through him, the song Justice said he could hear from the purest...wait. A spirit… There was something. He remembered the Warden-Commander saying something, the story. _ ‘With enough lyrium…’  _ the drunken voice repeated in his mind. But that was something he couldn’t think about right now. It was too dangerous to think about what the Warden-Commander had told him right now. 

“We need more.”

_ There will be more. _

**

With the Circles falling, there was more. Two vials turned to seven, then twelve as they hunted for them. Some he scavenged from the bodies killed by Templars or starvation, as a mage learned food needed to come from more than the Circle’s kitchen. The girl Justice...well. Others recognized him, as well.

_ How many do you need?  _

Justice hadn’t known the taste of it while they were together, except as a rare treat. It wasn’t like Kirkwall had been handing the stuff out, after all. Anders tried to remember the bowl. There had been a bowl?  _ ‘Both my hands, full like this, but not stew.’ _

He tried not to think of the bodies…so many bodies. And the worst were the ones who called his name. It was a curse to them.

“They all knew me. Know me.”

_ The ones who have said something judged us.  _ The voice was darker than usual.  _ They do not understand the righteousness of our cause. You freed them. _

Was that it? Were the others grateful somewhere else? Anders wanted to believe.

_ Do you have enough? _

“One more. I need one more.” What was one more death? He was so tired, but the copper taste never left him now, the scent wrapped through his dreams - how many had it been? 

“I have to drink it. All of it. Next time.”

Would Justice care?

_ Would he guess? _

The next one - the next vial, the next time, Anders forced himself past the shock to act immediately. It had to be enough, if it was soon enough after the killing. Was there a spell or just the lyrium? He couldn’t remember. Wait. The Warden-Commander said there was a ritual, and with the lyrium in his blood making everything sharper, he could remember the words. So similar to others he’d known, just powered by more than what you needed to push a mind to sleep. 

The lyrium. He drank it all, not caring about the possible side effects. The rush silenced the other voice - it had been so long. But yes, death was still everywhere, the coppery scent, the pain free-floating...he had more than enough, Justice was more than a body could stand, there was always a cut, a tear, and he’d read. Oh, yes, he’d read enough tomes, even if it was with sick fascination rather than eagerness. Hawke had asked him to, once.

It wasn’t that hard, really.

The death was already there.

_ What are you… _

<Doing?>

Everything was hazy in the Fade, but it was still where they had been. He hadn’t been concerned about creating a space here, so it was formless outside of the glowing spots he pulled on for strength. Shattered stone tumbled without falling, and he saw a flash of his once-Commander. Anders could thank him later. Instead, he faced the only other figure, any spirits driven away from what he had done.

Justice looked at him from his own face, eyes cracked and bright blue, holding the staff he’d abandoned before they’d crossed the Waking Sea to find Ferelden waiting for the war. The war they’d tried to start, that didn’t come until much, much later.  _ ‘There can be no peace.’  _ They had judged, they had determined it was necessary.

There had been no freedom, only death...only the very death that let him pull them both to the Fade.

“This is too much. Too far.” His voice cracked. His fingers dug into the splintered wood of his walking stick as he stared at the stronger, more certain reflection in front of him.

<This is what you wanted. Freedom. Freedom does not come without a price. All the blood shed of the mages must be repaid in kind.> The other voice, coming from the more certain reflection of himself, did not.

He had wanted that. Oh, he knew he had, but - “Those weren’t thoughts I ever meant to have!”

His own face gave a hollow laugh as blue cracks formed in his skin. <They were the thoughts you expressed every day. You would Rage at what was done, but lacked the Courage to rectify it. You showed me it was a cause with no defenders. Injustice with no remedy. You dreamed it, the way to free them all. I merely provided the strength to complete your plan, and thus they were freed.>

Anders held the staff - no, he tried to reach back further. He wasn’t enough now. What was the first staff the Commander had given him? He built it in his mind until he could feel it against his fingertips. Polished cherry, with the strangest little crick three quarters up the way...Yes. Yes, this was better. 

“It’s done, Justice.”

<You cannot mean that. You offered a place. We have not seen our work completed.>

“This is the Fade. Stay here.” His voice cracked again, but he’d still said the words.  _ Here, you couldn’t smell the blood... _

<It is not so easy as that,> the other chided. <This is a foolish waste of our time. We have more to do. The war has been halted, but it can still..>

“NO!”

Lyrium still flowed through his mind, even after the death to push him into the Fade. What would happen? He didn’t know. Maybe, if he were lucky, he’d never need to know, but for now he pushed back for the first time. Pure force pinned Justice in place - a Justice that had forgotten the feel of the Fade, had become rigid from his time in the physical.

Anders threw bolt after bolt of pain shaped into daggers, then a whirling dervish of icy horror, at Justice. His face howled in pain from the one source the spirit - demon - had known would never turn on him.

Humans could always turn on the ones they’d sworn promises to.

“No more,” he sobbed as his face vanished under bloody damage. “No more.”

The form crumpled and wavered. The voice he’d heard for so long was silent. Silence...blessed silence… The power faded as he lost his grip on it.

**

When he woke up, he felt as though he’d had a rock dropped on him. It was a distressingly familiar sensation, he realized with odd detachment. Even his eyelashes hurt. There was no scent of burning, but the insistent buzzing made him try to wrinkle his ears. A sickly sweet stench came next. He knew that one. Mortification. He’d seen it often enough in his clinic - it had been an academic problem before he’d gotten to Kirkwall, a challenge for the golden healer. In his clinic, it had become an everyday occurrence.

Little twigs pushed into his cheeks, and brittle grass cut at his hand when he moved it. He could move, then. Anders couldn’t tell if that was good.  _ Something is wrong. Different.  _ It was too quiet. Despite the lead they were coated in, he forced his eyes open to meet those of a blackened, bloated corpse.

The last one he’d needed - he’d killed for lyrium. He retched, the thin trickle of bile still more wholesome than what was before him. He felt...empty. Alone. His ears were stuffed with cotton, and so was his head.

Then the cotton ripped. Everything poured back on him. Justice had been wrong.  _ He  _ hadn’t wanted any of what happened. He hadn’t wanted the death...he’d just wanted  _ freedom.  _ Freedom for all of them. They deserved freedom!

This time, there was no hollow voice in his head answering him. It rang with all the words no one else would say. Justice...his hand clenched on the now-empty vial, not a trace of blue remaining in it or the others shattered on the ground.

There was no one to lie to him now but himself - and he’d forgotten how to lie about more than Justice.

He  _ had _ wanted it. It wasn’t  _ Justice  _ who came up with the formulae, who’d researched the odd tomes he’d squirreled away from Quentin’s house, from the cave they’d found Grace in, or the ones the mages the Underground had rescued brought out with them, their eyes flaring with a desire to strike  _ back. _

Justice was too direct for what they had done - it took a human to think of how to warp another human’s decisions, how to use their own narrow-minded hate against them.

“She would have done it anyway!”

_ Elthina had refused.  _ He hadn’t cared, certain that this was the spark everyone else needed - that everyone else wanted.

_ ‘You’ve doomed us all!’  _ It wasn’t the echoing words he was used to, but something else entirely. Memories they’d once pushed back came to the fore. He remembered where he’d heard those words spat at him.

Orsino had snarled that accusation at him, horror marking his urbane features, the odd greyness of his skin indicating some kind of lung disease he didn’t have a competent enough spirit healer to address. How had he responded?

There was no Justice to distract him, to focus him on the now rather than what was past. Justice wasn’t concerned about the past. It was complete. But now, the words came back. He’d answered Kirkwall’s First Enchanter.  _ ‘You were already dead,’  _ he’d replied. Such a simple set of words to hold so much weight. He’d thought that once. He’d believed that everyone was as dead as he was inside the Circle’s walls - especially Kinloch. How could they be otherwise?

He’d decided for them - for them all. His hands scrabbled at the dry grass underneath him as he drew in his knees and began to cry. He was a  _ healer,  _ for Andraste’s sake! How many people had he hurt? How many had he killed?  _ How many would still die for what he’d tried to start?  _ Worst of all...he’d  _ wanted  _ it. He was alone now. He was...free.

“Maker, what have I done?”

_ How many had he killed for his own vengeance against Meredith and Orsino? _

How many had died because  _ they  _ needed to suffer for Karl? He’d used Justice as surely as he’d let the spirit use him, blamed him for what he didn’t want to admit.

_ ‘You’re already dead,’  _ the corpse said to him in a sweet voice.

_ Maker, please.  _ If only he could be so lucky.


End file.
